Why Was Jesus Executed?

Jesuit advocate for social justice Fr Peter McVerry links the historic crucifixion of Jesus with how he would be treated today.

In Iran some people have been executed for protesting against the rules and practices imposed on them by their religious/political leaders. They were charged with waging ‘a war against God.’ Jesus, too, was charged with blasphemy. He was considered an agent of Satan: ‘It is by the power of Beelzebub that he casts out devils’, they said.

The religious leaders of Israel told the people that their salvation depended on their observance of God’s laws. This was perfectly understandable. After all, when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, God made a covenant with the people that God would protect them, and lead them into the promised land, provided the people would obey God’s laws. At the core of their religious faith and practice, therefore, was the exact, meticulous observance of all God’s laws, as interpreted by their religious leaders. When Israel was invaded by foreign armies, the people banished and the temple destroyed, this was attributed to God’s punishment for their lax observance of God’s laws.

Then Jesus came along. He often broke the law, for example, by healing on the Sabbath, which was considered work and therefore forbidden. He criticised the Pharisees who meticulously observed the details of the law, but ‘neglected the weightier matters of the Law: justice, mercy, good faith’. Jesus was considered to be offending God, undermining the faith of the people and risked bringing God’s anger and punishment down on them for failing to observe the laws as faithfully as they should.

Jesus revealed a God who loves us with an infinite and unconditional love, so much so that even our imagination cannot grasp the extent of God’s love. But you don’t get executed for telling people how much God loves them. cBut Jesus also reminded them that God loves everyone else with the same infinite and unconditional love. This had radical implications for the way they lived their lives and organised their society. Jesus talked about the compassion and love of God for the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the women taken in adultery, the infirm, the poor, and insisted that their dignity as beloved children of God be recognised and affirmed. But these were groups whom the religious authorities of his time despised and taught others to despise, whom they cast out and taught others to cast out, whom they rejected and taught others to reject, believing that they were obeying the God of the law.

It was clear to Jesus, from early in his public life, that the religious leaders were plotting ‘how to get rid of him’. Just as, in Afghanistan today, it would be clear to everyone that, if they stood in the public square, demanding that women have a right to be educated and to work, the authorities would plot to get rid of them. But Jesus was prepared to sacrifice everything, even his own life, to defend the dignity of the poor and unwanted as beloved children of God.

And if Jesus returned to earth today, he would again have to be got rid of. To believe in a God who not only loves me but who also loves those that are starving, are homeless, are addicted, the abused and the abusing, those who are robbing, are dealing in drugs, is so challenging because it has such radical implications for our personal behaviour and the way our society is organised. Just as Jesus, through the Incarnation, entered into solidarity with the human race, the God of compassion requires us, too, to enter into a radical solidarity with each other, including the poor and the excluded. But only those who know they are sinners in need of God’s compassion, and therefore humble enough not to judge others, can dare to believe in the God of compassion.

To believe in the God of righteousness, who rewards the good (as defined by ourselves) and punishes the wicked (as defined by ourselves), is to worship a false God. We have to silence those who call us into solidarity with those we call ‘sinners’ Jesus had to die.